When It’s OK to Burn Miles on Short Domestic Flights

The answer to that headline is almost never in my book, but like all things….there are exceptions to the rule. MrsMJonTravel and I are leaving for Dayton Sunday morning. I won’t get into why on the blog, but we need to be there. I priced flights on United from Dulles, and they wanted $1,218.00….each! US Airways from DCA was a bit better….$700 dollars each. Finally, I checked Southwest from BWI into Columbus (then drive to Dayton). All that was available were fully refundable fares at $172.00 each way for the Anytime Fare and $185 for Business Select. Either of those is a very reasonable price to pay for short notice travel. Unfortunately, I didn’t book right then. By the time it was apparent that we had to fly to Dayton, Southwest was completely sold out. Even United, at the ridiculous price they were posting is now sold out for the dates and times we need.

Enter American Airlines. Both MrsMJonTravel and I have a few miles in our accounts that we won’t likely use anytime soon, so I checked AAdvantage award availability. There were no MilesAAver seats available, but AAnytime award space was there, so I snagged it. Since I’m a Gold AAdvantage member, I do not have to pay the ridiculous short-notice award fee, but did have to pay it for MrsMJonTravel. So..for $120.00, we are flying to Dayton with the exact dates and times we need.

If I could rewind the clock, I would have booked the refundable Southwest fare, and kept the miles. But time can’t be rewound. Other than driving (which I will not do), this was simply the best option for us, and I don’t regret using 50,000 miles each to get there. There are times when it’s OK to burn miles on short flights, and I can’t think of a better reason than saving well over $1,000 dollars in this case.

Marshall Jackson is an aviation enthusiast and avid cruiser. After 10 years in the airline business, Marshall moved on to a new career that includes plenty of travel and plenty of cruises, and that’s just the way he likes it.

[…] medical device attached to your body by a 3 feet long tiny tube for insulin to flow through. You are also aware that MrsMJonTravel and I spent 50,000 American Airlines miles each to fly to Dayton. Not the best […]

I think you’re going to start seeing a lot more of this domestically. As airlines continue to raise prices and slash award availability, 50,000 miles is going to become the new 25,000 miles. The interesting part is that you could end up getting more value this way. If you’re using 50K miles for a $1,200 ticket you’re getting over 2 cents per mile. That’s as opposed to the old standard of using 25K miles for a $300 – $400 ticket and getting around 1.5 points.

I just had to use miles to book at ORD>MCO trip for my daughter. She’s only coming to Orlando for a few hours for a wedding shower. With it being prime tourist season in Orlando, airfares were running $600-700 — even on a Saturday round-trip. Instead of her paying for this crazy fare for just a few hour trip, I was able to get her a ticket for 37,500 United miles. A fare $500+ is my soft line in the sand as to when it could make sense to use miles vs. dollars. I’m now looking at using Continental miles… Read more »

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7 years ago

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Marc

How come you didn’t book the BS or anytime fare on Southwest? They are fully refundable and could have saved you those precious miles